Nine Books About Your Life:Juliet Cook

In our Nine Books About Your Life series, authors are invited to talk about nine types of books that have had an impact on their lives. Their responses give us a glimpse into their relationships with their books and other people’s books. In this installment, we speak with Juliet Cook, author of the forthcoming chapbook REVOLTING.

First Book
As a heads up, my brain has a hard time narrowing anything down to ONE, so this will cause my responses to these questions to go in various different (but somewhat interconnected) directions.

I have my own memory issues and remember what my mind remembers for its own reasons.

I don’t remember the first book, but I do remember loving the library. I was a rather voracious reader as a kid and teen. I remember liking Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume (and other books by Judy Blume, such as Blubber) because it dealt with teenage girl/young adult body stuff.

I also remember being drawn to content above my own age level, such as horror novels. I remember reading parts of The Exorcist in my family’s basement (because I didn’t think I’d be allowed to bring it upstairs). I remember sneaking an old adult book about the torture of saints out of our church library and reading that like another sort of horror. I remember being into Splatterpunk. For years, I’ve seemed to have an affinity towards horror and gore in art and writing.

Bodies and body horror.

Minds and psychological horror.

Later, I fused some elements of horror into my poetry.

Most Cherished Book
My favorite style of book is hand-made, hand-designed poetry chapbooks.

I think this initially began with my interest in zines and indie lit mags, which started when I was in my twenties. I’m now fifty-one and still have a strong affinity towards independent presses rather than large-scale presses (and independent movies rather than mainstream and independent restaurants rather than chains, and so on and so forth). I’m not downright against mainstream, large-scale, popular stuff; I like some more mainstream, popular music and movies and art and books, too. But overall, I’m more drawn towards the small scale and independent.

I mostly submit my poetry to indie presses, and I’m more geared toward poetry chapbooks rather than full-lengths.

In my twenties, I read quite a few RE/SEARCH Books, including several focused on zines. I kept three of my favorites – RE/Search #4/5: Burroughs, Throbbing Gristle, Brion Gysin (my younger self was very interested in William S. Burroughs) and RE/Search People Series: Bob Flanagan: Supermasochist—and my favorite one, RE/Search Angry Women (especially the parts about Diamanda Galas and Kathy Acker).

I’ve accumulated hundreds upon hundreds of poetry chapbooks over the years.

I have quite a few different favorite poetry chapbooks and books, but another book that I will mention is The Light the Dead See by Frank Stanford. Many years ago, I happened to find it in the poetry section of a discount bookstore, I had no familiarity with Frank Stanford at that time, but I thought the book seemed interesting, so I bought it. Ended up loving the book based on the content itself and then finding out more about Frank Stanford…

Most Perplexing Book
There are some writers whose success or popularity I don’t understand or relate to, perhaps partly because I’m not aimed toward popularity, clichéd humor, or lightness. In the past, I was angrier and might have named names, but in the present, I try to focus on what I do like more than what I don’t like and there are a lot of different styles of poetry (and other forms of art and writing) that I do like.

I will say that back when I initially started my own little indie print press, many years ago, a poet who seemed to be getting quite a bit of mainstream attention at the time was a poet who I didn’t personally relate to or enjoy and whose poetry style I thought of as akin to vanilla snack pack pudding poetry, and thus I chose to name my press Blood Pudding Press.

Life-changing Book
Many books have impacted my life in different times of my life, because, to some extent I think tastes change as ones own experiences change over time. Most of my biggest impacts have been through poetry.

Even though I already really liked poetry as a kid and teen, my local library and school weren’t sharing much contemporary poetry at that time. They were sharing older poetry. I liked some of the older poetry, but its language was different than contemporary language, so for quite a while, I didn’t realize how closely connected I could get to some poetry on a more personal level. That it wasn’t just interesting creative writing from the past but was a unique way to express oneself in the present.

I think it was sometime near the end of high school that I was in some random bookstore that had a book by Marge Piercy in their poetry section. At that time, I had never heard of her before, I just picked up the book because it was in the poetry section. I opened it up, started flipping through it, and felt really excited to encounter that people could express themselves in poetry in ways that were comparable to the way people expressed themselves in present real life.

That generated a mental breakthrough that helped me realize that people could write about whatever they chose to write about and use their poetry to express themselves in the language and subject matter of their own choice.

Most Underrated Book
I think there are lots of books that don’t get enough attention.

Part of the reason is because there are just so many books! How do we narrow things down to one or a few?

Another reason is because poetry, my favorite style of writing, doesn’t get much mainstream attention anyway.

As for those of who ARE drawn to poetry, I think that what we’re most strongly drawn to in any given time also depends on that time in our lives, our own life experiences, and various related elements.

On a side note, in my opinion and experience, one thing that has substantially changed about poetic attention in the last two decades is how much of its attention seems to be generated via social media and self-promotion.

I’m not against social media or self-promotion; I think they both have their very good elements and their not-so-good elements.

One element I am a fan of is increased exposure to a broader range of presses and writers (although that can become overwhelming).

One element I am not a fan of is how sometimes it seems like a writer’s online presence (or persona or popularity/fan base or how others respond to them) seems to generate more attention than the actual writing.

I enjoy some personalized online connections and interactions with other poets, but overall, I don’t care about a poet’s online presence as much as I care about the actual poetry.

Sometimes I feel like genuine honesty and the actual poetry are underrated.

A Surprising Book
Since I primarily read poetry, some might be surprised about some of the fiction I love. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and Oblivion by David Foster Wallace would be two examples.

Another example would be Kathy Acker’s novels. I read a lot of them, but one of the ones I kept is Empire of the Senseless. Much of her writing is formatted like fiction, but the writing style seems poetic to me.

Your Most Recent Book
I had three new poetry chapbooks published in 2023 by three different small independent presses. red flames burning out, published by Grey Book Press; Contorted Doom Conveyor, published by Gutter Snob Books; and my most recently published one is Your Mouth Is Moving Backwards, published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press.

The poems in Your Mouth Is Moving Backwards are filled with internal and external violence, chaotic horror, humans trapped behind walls or in beds, dolls thrown down the stairs and hiding in partially contained places, dolls pretending to be humans, humans pretending to be dolls, humans fused together with evil.

Some of the inspiration for some of the poems partly derived from Twin Peaks. Fifteen poems in the collection have the title “FLESH WORLD,” which comes from the name of a magazine in Twin Peaks. But there are other titles too and other inspirations and insinuations too, including my own experiences, thoughts, and feelings doused into dark red poetry.

Your Next Book
It takes me considerably longer to format full-length poetry manuscripts as opposed to chapbooks. Partly because the ordering of the poems is very important to me, but the more poems you have to order, the more of a challenge. Despite having been wanting/meaning to assemble my third individual full-length poetry manuscript for several years now, I keep putting it off, because shorter projects seem to take precedence in my brain.

But I do hope to find a way to inspire my drive towards assembling my next full-length manuscript sometime this year.

I also have another new poetry chapbook, entitled REVOLTING, forthcoming from Cul-de-sac of Blood in fall 2024. Its content is also horrific and partly inspired by those who try to take control of those they should not be in control of.

Plug a Book
I tend towards reading many different poetry chapbooks/books at a time, in split apart phases (one poem from this book then two or three poems from this book then five poems from this book). With that said, since I am a fan of Ethel Zine & Micro Press, I will plug one poetry chapbook from that press that I just finished reading. It is would-be future-humans by Jenny Irish. I don’t know the writer personally, but I love this collection. The chapbook is aesthetically gorgeous and the content is natural versus unnatural, humans becoming machines, metal wombs, those metal wombs developing human tendencies, life and death and birthing and programming and horror and hints of AI developing its own language and possible human extinction.

I am also a fan of unique, independent online literary magazines, many of them, but two that I’ve been continually drawn to in recent years are Cul-de-sac of Blood and Misfit Magazine.